Farm-to-Market 3179 was a Grey Poupon washboard at the northern edge of the city, a cratered postdiluvial floodplain combination of dried mud, quicksand and boulders that connected the two struggling--make that convulsing--exurb entities of Oxbow and Caliche Hills. On a good day, you could see through the dust which any vehicular traffic inevitably generated in traversing its colonic curves, to the graceless orange brick institutional structures hulking skyward over the rain-starved native trees.
This, however, did not seem to be one of those rare days. The air quality was reminiscent of Mt. St. Helens after the big blow.
The sweating bicyclist wobbling industriously along the back road's snaking shoulder was puffily humming a highly devolved version of “Don't Fence Me In.” His sweatshirt, which most undeniably was, declared that he forever owed allegiance to one George Ravel University, contributor of aforesaid orange skyline. What it did not declare was that he was Ravel's preeminent professor of High Energy Physics, out for a noontime workout, and on the verge of becoming rather well-known for a startling new theory on the implications of multidimensional space warping by hypermasses in infant galaxies.
He inhaled the cedar-tanged solution of air and dilute roadbed with a connoisseur's delight. "Eat your cholesterol-padded heart out, Pete," he invited a distant university compatriot, who was no doubt at this very hour languishing in the fetid shower stalls and sauna closets of Ravel's grudgingly provided amenities. Not for him the tile paved with infective spores of Tenia pedis and the rote repetition of lifts, presses and pushups, no sir!
"Gimme me dust, lotsa (puff) dust,
In the desert that I (puff) cuss,
(Puff) Don't fence me i-i-i-n-n-n..."
The professor negotiated a particularly large limestone prominence, which emerged from the tortured earth like a set of crocodilian eyeballs, with a practiced wrenching of handlebars, wholly absorbed in appreciation of his skill, displayed even while blinded by stinging salt in both eyes. Abruptly behind him, he heard the roar of an engine and sliding rumble of rubber wheels making intermittent contact with the erstwhile roadbed. A car horn sounded just abaft his left ear, sending him skidding in fright off into pin oaks and chaparral as it blew by. Through a thick flavor of airborne clay and grit of tears he barely made out the form of a 1940 Nash-Rambler sedan, and just possibly a driver, hiding themselves like an octopus in the jetting spew of camel-colored ink swirling in its passage.
"Gad-damn Japanese compacts!" he couldn't shake his fist, clutching as he was to the wildly gyrating horns of a two-wheeled dilemma. Was he up or was he down? "Come back here and fight like a gad-damned man!"
He was, he discovered somewhat to his surprise, still up. Pleased but heart thumping with adrenaline, he bounced out of the rough and back onto the tumble, creatively inventing portable weapons a cyclist might employ to wreak extravagant havoc on such sons of bitches in the future.
He was still inventing, but now much more consciously wary, when he rounded the last narrow turn before Caliche Hills and found a large dump truck materializing out of the haze, careening down the hill with its engine unaccountably silent. He jumped his bike nimbly over the recently bulldozed, raised dirt shoulder and jammed to a stop threaded between two scrawny hackberries, watching in amazement as the truck passed through space his profoundly soft protoplasm had occupied scant seconds before. He was still contemplating his narrow brush with death when the sound of the truck's final impact reached his ears from a brushy turn below. A few moments later, a burnt-faced small man in sweaty jeans and matching scowl came running past.
"Seen a truck come this way?" the man accosted him. The professor pointed numbly toward the receiving thicket below. "Got out for lunch. Bad brakes," the fellow provided a rationale, if not an apology, then threw his glance onward to the waving trees downhill--"Aw. Crap."--and moved on, speed much reduced.
The professor shook his head, beyond mere anger. First one asshole scares the shit out of him, then another tries to convert him to macadam binder. Worse yet, he had to admit, if it hadn’t been for the officious miss of the first, the second almost certainly would have gotten him.
Amongst a host of less likely determinations, he was shocked to find himself entertaining the notion of giving up cycling and possibly reassessing his evaluation of Ravel's facilities. Could it be that friend Pete had a valid point?
He rolled back onto the roadway, doggedly topped the steep hill, and put that modified meeting place with destiny behind. Faintly, as he proceeded, the distant snarl of a big engine started up, then receded into its own divergent subset of space-time.
Good gad! A noontime membership in the fungus fitness club?
He sighed, standing to pump up a last rise before cautiously joining the main road back to the university.
You cocky sonuvabitch. Wouldn't that have been embarrassing, scraped up like peanut butter, spread on a stretcher and carried past old Pete's tut-tutting, I-told-you-so eyes? All those hard-won, tenuous insights into the nature of things, converted to an underground bacterial smorgasbord. What would be the grand contribution to humanity then?
Gad-damned considerations of practicality. Another romantic, independent soul on the chopping block of harsh reality.
Still, he reflected, sourly, survival did have its attractive
aspects. And it was possible--just possible--that insuring
it might require just a tad more of a share of his attention in
the future...
Dr. Alice Weston withdrew her finger just shy of the elevator call button.
OUT OF SERVIS
UNDER REPEAR
the hand-lettered sign read, taped crookedly over the panel. She frowned at the offensive misspelling. Imagine some personnel manager employing people of that mentality to fix such highly technical and dangerous devices! And in a hospital, of all places! She hoped it wasn't typical of this provincial facility.
Alice glanced back toward the Emergency Room and saw that preparations for moving the patient were nearly complete. They were wheeling the gurney toward her even then.
"This lift is down! Have you got another?"
"Lift? Oh, the elevator! Just around the corner a ways," one of the sweating young interns called back. They came swiftly past her. Just as she shrugged in resignation and was turning, hefting her own burden of notebooks, the elevator chimed and its door slid open.
"Dr. Weston, I presume," a male voice greeted her quietly. The man's tall form halted, framed in the now-opened doorway, watching her with puzzled surmise. "They told me you'd blown in. I didn't know you'd come to try your hand at interning again."
She felt her chin quiver and sought to keep the tremor from spreading to her voice. "Rodney! You are still here!" She found her hand out, him shaking it solemnly.
"You’re the only person on earth still alive that calls me that," he gave her a comic squint. "It's been awhile."
She smiled and was surprised to feel only a trace of bitterness. Her eyes swept across his hand in hers. No new wedding band on either of us, she registered the fact--and her observation of it--with a tinge of irony. "Always the master of understatement." Her glance darted back down the hall, then to the elevator. "Bloody damned elevator! I was about to go on by. I thought it was supposed to be broken!"
The harshness of her words broke the spell between them.
"The elevator? Something wrong with it?"
She gave him a look and indicated the sign. He stepped out into the hall and stared back at it. "That's funny. I didn't see anything upstairs."
"Here, they're taking my O.R. Stat on to a different lift. I'll call them back."
He laughed with the old American boyish cheerfulness she thought she had forgotten. "Don't bother. Maybe somebody knows something we don't. Hell, I seldom trust these suckers even when they're supposed to be working!" He waved her on down the corridor. "Those fellows know where they're going. We'll take the stairs." He found he had to take them two at a time to keep up, conducting his conversation over the clatter of her heels. "It was my day off today, you know. They called me in on this one. Didn't know you were here til I got in and the chief said you'd walked into the middle of it in the E.R. What's the occasion?"
She snorted, only partly from the exertion of the climb, glancing at his face. "Typical combination of shenaniganry and schmuckliness. I walk in the door, find out my invitation was counterfeit, grouse about my precious time, and this happens!"
His puzzled glance looked genuine enough. "Counterfeit? Someone called you?"
"Priority Mail, actually. They knew my London apartment address for the summer." She shook her head, acutely aware of the expressions crossing his face out of the corner of her eye. Certainly no furtive guilt. It could have been one of her British cohorts. God knew they had enough twists in their left-handed humour. "It doesn't matter. I'm here. We're going to have to do an immediate deep exploratory, but I'm afraid there's no doubt. The boy has an aortal aneurysm. I've got them assembling everyone we'll need." She looked across at him as they reached the second landing. "But I'm glad you're here. I'm not sure they understood my surgical orders."
"Yeah. That Liverpoolian accent always gets 'em." He stepped up their climb. "Then you don't mind if I come along and watch the master at work?" He turned toward her, catching her blush. They dodged around a mousy woman in a dusty black skirt and tan blouse, heading down. "Sorry. Just a piss poor joke, Alice. You know I'll be damned glad to have you on this." One more flight. "Know who our patient is?"
"Just some farmer's son. He dropped like a bloody stone during gym class. Unusual, an aneurysm in one so young. Congenital, most likely."
"Unusual, a surgeon of your caliber being here," he rejoined as they emerged from the stairwell into a green corridor. "Have you figured out who sent the prank invitation?"
"Not much chance of that," she sighed. "Someone with access to State stationery. About half a million souls, at last count." Then she grinned at him. "Besides, I thought it might have been you, Rod!"
He smiled back. "I have to disavow that level of ingenuity. Wish I'd thought of it, though. Long ago."
They locked glances. There was an unexpectedly warm tingling down her side as they turned toward the surgical suite. Oh, my God. You dope! You swore you would never get this close to him again! "Don't you ever get tired of a backwater place like this, Rod? I know, it's what you said you always wanted. But--When you could have had the run of Bethesda?"
"You've got to be joking! Look at your hair, salted and peppered from all the high tension meetings and deadlines, wrinkles at your nose... Of course, you already had some of those-"
"Well, I don't think that's a fair judgment. You haven't got any hair!"
"I beg your pardon! I have plenty! I just left in such a rush that I forgot it on the dresser." He palmed his pate. "And I have sunshine-- Lots of it! Golf every Wednesday. Fishing on the weekends. The simple, rustic life for me! Besides, where else would a guy find himself so desperately needed?"
They exited the stairwell, turned left and passed by the upstairs elevator doors. "There's the sign. Just as crudely misspelled," she pointed.
"Well, what do you know. I must have been totally distracted by someone. Uh, something!"
"You're lovely." She stopped midhallway. He had gone on past a few steps, then came back, looking at her with a quizzical expression. She addressed him with characteristic candor. "I confess I was ready for a break, Rod, or I would have called ahead to confirm the letter. I mean, it was so odd." She took a deep breath. "More than that, really. I wanted to come, but I didn't have a way to find out why they were inviting me. There would really have been no reason, except if you-- had..."
He met her eyes. "But I didn't."
"I know. You've said so." She held her breath for a moment, waiting.
"Really, Alice. I didn't." He shrugged uncomfortably. "When I heard you'd come, I'd thought that maybe, maybe you had reconsidered your attachment to life at the top?"
"Rod..."
"No, I don't say that with contempt, Allie. Maybe I did, once, but I've seen your work up there, and it's been good. Great, really. Good for others, not just yourself." He stopped, realizing he was talking too fast. "Allie, I don't understand this opportunity, but I think it would be a shame to waste it."
She nodded. Then laughed, feeling something long buried beginning to flicker again. "All right, Rod. We'll just chalk it up to fate." She put out her hand again, and he took it warmly. "It will be nice to work with you again."
"I second that. And lucky for our young emergency case, as well," he slapped the pass-through button into pre-op. As they turned in, he saw two young interns stepping into the elevator down the way. "Hey!" he called out, too late to halt them. "Stupid idiots. If they can't read any better than I can, they're in deep shi-"
The elevator alarm went off even before the surgical suite doors shut behind them. Alice exchanged humorous glances with Rod. "They'll be studying up on your maintenance people's peculiar Sanskrit now," she laughed.
He chuckled. "You can bet on that! The last time someone got stuck in that thing, it took us an hour to figure how to get them out." The gurney bearing her patient emerged from the next crosshall. "Down here, boys!"
"Thank God for backups."
They hustled on down toward the second set of wide doors
and a small side room marked Surgical Prep.
"Hair of a dog."
Jason Hammel sat in the airport lounge and downed another Manhattan. His hands were no longer shaking as he raised a cigarette to his lips.
"So what's it going to be, Jenny?"
"Still goodbye, Jase." The girl met his eyes steadily. Her blue eyes, so dear to him, were hard and steely between her carefully mascaraed lashes. Her face was perfection itself, aided by a few discreet tools of the stewardess's trade. "I'm not flying with you again. And I think you should have sense enough to quit."
He laughed humorlessly, stubbing out the cigarette in the booth's black tray. "Quit a job I love? Just because I like a party now and then."
"Jase," the girl said urgently. "It isn't now and then. It's every night, every stopover. And it's getting out of hand. That's what I want you to stop. And flying, too, for a while."
"Bullcrap."
"You're not being fair, Jase. Not to me, and not to a lot of other people. I'm not going on this flight. Not with you."
"Hold your voice down," he said querulously. "You trying to make a goddam scene?"
"All right," she sat back, almost in a whisper. "I'm asking you as quietly and respectfully as I can. Please, Jason. Use your own good judgment?"
"You're right, it is my good judgment. You've been reading too many women's rags, kid, and you're getting on my nerves. If you can't take flying and the way its people live, then you quit! Or go ahead and pull out of this flight, and they'll ground you. Psychological profile, down in flames." He made a swooping motion with his hand.
"Don't!" she squeaked, grabbing his arm.
He waited until she let go, then held out both his hands across the table.
"Take a look," he commanded. "Go on! Look at me. Steady as goddam Gibraltar."
And he was. His hands, still young and strong, the veins ropy and blue under tanned freckles and a sparse soft black forest of hairs, floated before her tear- filled gaze like well- crafted boats on a placid lake.
"It comes and goes, Jase. It's here now. I'm worried about when it's gone."
"You're nuts, Jenny."
She got up, flushed with anger. "All right. It's your stupid neck. I'm out of here."
His eyes followed her stiffly swaying form until her beautiful silhouette turned a corner at the lounge's entrance and disappeared into the crowded passageway. A shadow appeared beside the booth.
"Another round, Captain?"
He grinned crookedly up at the waitress's interested face. Not bad looking in a mature sort of way. "Yeah, I've got a few minutes. Just one though. The lady had to leave."
Ten minutes later, plunking a twenty down on the exit counter, he got the woman's phone number and punched it into his pocket calc with a flourish. "I'll be back Friday, toots. Want a night on the town? I guarantee, I know how to do it right."
The waitress blushed, smiling with a becoming shyness. "I don't get off til midnight."
"Hey, great! The day'll be just beginning. See you Friday. Make that Saturday morning."
He collected his change and started to turn, a whistled tune just coming to his lips, when the airport PA came alive in some hidden nook.
"Paging Captain Jason Brandel. Captain Jason Brandel. You have an emergency call at the Information booth."
"Isn't that you?" the pretty waitress called after him.
"Yeah, it's me. They're just hot to trot. Gotta catch my flight, kid. See ya."
He hurried out into the terminal corridors, hefting his flight valise. Emergency call! Who the hell would fall for a trick like that? Goddam airheaded females. Jenny, you bitch, d'you think I'm going to follow you down in flames?
Thirty minutes later, next in line behind a red and white American 737, Ft. Worth headquarters reached him on the special frequency.
"A tricky message, Captain Brandel."
"Yah, Wil?" he blinked the blur out of his glance across the instrument panel's constellation of orange and green displays. Too damned much glare off those fancy CRTs and LCDs in the daytime. Gimme the old fashioned dials and verniers any day.
"Seems your grandmother called and wanted to get you before you took off."
"My grandmother? I ain't got no goddam grandmother. Not this side of the Pearly Gates, anyways."
"I know, sir. It sounded a little weird, so we checked around before we called."
"That's all? No phony bomb threats? Didya trace the call?" Jesus, Jenny! You could drag us both down!
"Eventually, sir. A pay phone out by the medical complex."
"Medical complex? Here?" Jason ran a hand across his brow, unconsciously wiped the dampness off on his pantleg. Halfway across the frigging city. She must have driven like a bat outta hell! "Hey, that's a corker. Well, let me know if she calls back. And better have the news media around. Ain't often you get a call from the Great Beyond."
"Yes sir." There was a slight pause. "Do you think we have anything to worry about here, Captain?"
"No. Nothing I can't handle, Willy boy. Thanks for the call."
Jason signed off, pulled his headset down around his neck and rubbed a hand across his mouth and chin. Out on the apron, heat waves danced in the wake of the leading jet's exhausts. The roughness against his palm startled him. Damn! Forgot to shave again. He caught his copilot looking at him askance.
"Trouble?"
"Yeah," Jason shook his head with a grin. "Girl problems."
He moved his hands toward the wheel, feeling a slight tremor in them. "The hell with 'em. Let's punch a few clouds, Cal."
"It's your plane, Jase."
"You're goddam right."
The lead 737 had pirouetted and was beginning its throaty
roar back past them toward the sky. He shoved the throttles
forward, heading for his final takeoff position.
"Hey! What're you doin' with my car!" the attendant ran out into the drive as soon as he recognized the sound of the engine stuttering in the gate. "Oh, criminy. Gracie, have you been out again!"
Behind him his replacement, just coming on the afternoon shift, stuck his head out of the main building's glass doors. "Need help, Jerry?"
"Nah. She's looks OK, Mike. Go ahead and clock me out, will ya?"
Jeremiah Jones hustled his long black legs on out to the ticking car, arriving in time to hold the door for the unimposing little lady that climbed down the short distance to the gravel drive. Her canvas shoes were getting worn around the toes and heels, and her black skirt was uniformly dusty.
"What's the excuse this time, little mamma," he demanded with grouchy concern.
"Oh, I just had to make a few stops, Jeremy?"
"It's Jerry," he broke in with a response long become habit. "Now, you promised me this wouldn't happen again. Gracie, we're goin’ to have to lock you up! Now you don' like that, do you?"
"Oh, dear," she turned her old face with its nested wrinkles up toward him, giving him the full, bright force of her caring gaze. She gathered a small brown paper bag from the seat before allowing him to shut the car door.
He noted her burden. "What's in the bag? Been shopping?"
"Just some envelopes and stationery and things." She lifted her feet carefully at the curb. "I'm so sorry, Jeremy. I do so hate to get you into trouble?"
"-Me!-"
"-but there were some people I just had to see."
He gently disengaged the keys from her crepe paper hand, helping her toward the shaded walkway. He sighed heavily. "I know. I know. Who did you go out and save today?"
She looked at him with a quick birdlike glance, then directed her gaze back down to where her feet were shuffling carefully along the walk.
"Oh, well. Three. At least, two. I just couldn't figure how to reach the other one in time." She shook her head sadly. "I don't think as well as I used to, you know. Everything is so complicated."
Jeremiah nodded, sucking a bit of the noon meal succotash out from his upper teeth. "Well, that's just the way it goes, when you gets old. But you did good. Real good, Gracie. Three saved souls for one day."
"Just two, and not souls, Jeremy," the little lady corrected him patiently, the corners of her eyes damp. "And not really saved. Just a little time, that's all."
"Yes, ma'am." He guided her toward the crosswalk.
"It's like a great storm, Jeremy. So many raindrops, and I can catch so few." She barely moved her head to note his tolerant lack of response. "Two out of three isn't bad," she challenged him meekly.
"Not bad," he patted her on the arm as he guided her back toward the patient's quarters. "You been lookin' real tired these last few days, Gracie. I'd think you must be worn out after so much excitement. You prob'ly need a rest. Tomorrow's a big day, you know."
"Yes, " she agreed, walking frailly beside him. She didn't seem as excited as usual about an officially blessed chance to get out. Not that he could blame her, this time. Tomorrow's events hardly rated against the unauthorized activities she had managed today. "I’ll have to rest soon. But I have a few letters to write first, later this evening."
"More letters? You sure have lots of friends, Gracie." He didn't add the sad sequitur that occurred to him. How come none of 'em ever write back?
"You know, I was hoping I might just stay in and rest tomorrow."
"Well..."
"Oh, please, Jeremy. I'll be very good and stay right in my room. I believe I would really rather be at home tomorrow."
He caught the curious urgency in her old brown eyes peering from their loose- lidded folds, faded at the edges like ivory- rimmed buttons.
"You really tired, huh? We see what we c'n do 'bout it, Miss Gracie. But we had this app'intment with the den'ist for a month. You know how your teeth been hurtin'."
"Ye-e-s," she agreed, her speech slightly stretched out in unwilling agreement. "But I really do wish we could change it."
Dr. Baycourt, take a cancellation this late in the day? Jerry could just imagine his response. Ol' Baycourt didn't get the nickname "Red" f'r the color of his hair! If they had their way, these old folks would put off a visit to him til hell'd froze over! Still, they had to be pushed along soft...
"We see what we c'n do, Miss Gracie. No promises. But now, you got to promise me you goin' to be good. And I'm goin’ to have to hide my keys a lot better. How'd you find 'em, Gracie?"
She peered around at him with her coquettish little smile. There was a fine grey dust on the almost invisible down on her cheek. "Well, now, Jeremy, I can't tell you all my secrets!"
"Hey, you don' tell me none of 'em," he laughed in spite of himself.
"Oh, yes, I did," she disagreed sweetly, and stopped him just short of the big ash tree whose white-barked limbs arched over the walk. "I've told you a few."
A grackle cawed noisily up in the branches and launched itself across the lawn in search of less populated surroundings. Its parting shot splashed wetly unnoticed, just shy of his feet, as they moved on.
He pursed his lips and nodded in considered agreement. Secrets. They were all there in her charts, those harmless old delusions. How many people were still out there walking around with a helluva lot less pleasant ideas in their heads?
"Well. I guess I do know a few, by now."
"I can tell you another, Jeremy."
"What's that, little mama?"
She sighed, realizing she was unable to find a way to change it, almost resigned to it now. Why should the world turn any differently for her?
"It's going to rain tomorrow."
